A Message Left Unsent

The morning sun would filter through the curtains, but it was little consolation. I only lay and remained inert, my body a captive of a fight between two worlds-one clinging desperately to whatever past existed, and the other trying to grasp at anything meaningful in this bottomless pit.

The scroll on my phone could almost be categorized as a vice-a muscle memory of sorts. My fingers danced over her name again, long enough to suppress an ache. I knew better than to open our old chat, but the temptation is a funny thing. Just a glance, I told myself. One glance and I'm putting it away.

Instead, besides rereading our old conversations, my eyes fell upon something utterly out of place: a draft of an unsent message-a message I had typed so long ago yet never sent.

"I have something to tell you, but I don't know how."

The words stared at me, heavy with meaning; it was a message that had been buried somewhere between indecision and the fear of losing her. Yet, what was it I wanted to say?

It unnerved me, like some break of frame, some all-but-invisible fissure yet miraculously apparent. Yet, as it dragged me inside, the quiet edges of my mind were tugged hither and yon in some sort of desperate tug-of-war.

I turned the phone off and shoved it under the pillow. It just wasn't worth getting stuck in what-ifs and half-forgotten confessions. What mattered now was now, and maybe, somehow, how that'd go.

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Later in the day Ishnehal texted, asking me to go out for coffee with her. "Just coffee," she said, "no big life talks, I swear.

I demurred. It seemed a risk to meet her again so soon, a sort of opening of a door when I wasn't certain I'd walk through it. But then, the alternative was to stay home, alone with my thoughts, and the weight of that unposted message.

"Alright," I texted her back, "coffee sounds great."

The cafe she had opted for was kept nicely tucked away on some quiet street-those tiny places where the mixologist knew half their clientele on a first-name basis. She waved me over the minute I stepped in, her smile so disarmingly genuine.

We spoke about nothing in particular: books, movies at random, the idiocy of astrology apps-and for a while, I almost forgot the storm in me raging. Almost.

But as I sat there and listened to her tell some asinine story, laughing, I watched her in a way that felt dangerous. There was an ease in the way she spoke, as if life hadn't scarred her the way it did me.

Then, out of the blue, she asked, "What do you regret most in your life?

That was a painful question, much stronger than it should have been. In one second, my head was flung back to that unreleased message-to words I had never been able to say.

I swallowed and forced a laugh. "Not dropping out of Physics when I had the chance."

She smiled but flickered something in her eyes, as if to say that she knew too well I had told a part of the truth.

That night, and hours past when Ishnehal and I parted, that message stared back at me each time unsent. I told my head it was all going to be of no consequence now, and what I meant to say was rather immaterial.

But unease just would not leave-a nagging thought tagged in the back of my mind.

What if the one thing I never said could have changed everything?

Worse still, what if I was still in the middle of it?